


all you have to do is stay

by nystxgmic



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Gen, HUGE endgame spoilers once i update, Hurt No Comfort, originally posted on tumblr but then i made it longer, stucky but they're not together they're just friends :)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-13
Updated: 2018-08-10
Packaged: 2019-05-21 14:41:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14917262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nystxgmic/pseuds/nystxgmic
Summary: steve lost bucky three times...





	1. Chapter 1

steve rogers is not a vodka guy, but today he is. it’s too sharp, and it burns his throat, but the pain is what he needs right now. three shots. four. five. 

_if i had just been a little stronger, a little faster, i could have saved him. he could be alive and i wouldn’t be here but he’s dead and that’s on me._

six.

he hears footsteps, so he yawns and wipes his eyes to pretend he’s not crying. peggy sits down daintily next to him. “did you know i can’t get drunk?” steve laughs, but there’s no humor in it. 

“your metabolism is five times faster than the healthiest person on earth. so yes, i might have known that could be a side effect.” peggy smiles at him with sad eyes. she keeps talking, but steve stops listening. _you act like you’re some big hero, but you can’t even save your best friend._

seven.

_do i deserve this suit? this shield? this respect?_

eight.

“i’m going after schmidt,” he says, pointedly not looking at her. 

“you won’t be alone,” she responds, with that same sad smile again, and walks away.

steve hates when people pity him. 

nine.

_i could have saved you, buck, i’m so sorry._

ten.

the vodka isn’t doing anything to him, it just tastes bad, but steve feels like he deserves it. _i hope i see you again, and i’ll be damned if i don’t take out schmidt and all his goons before that. i miss you already, man._


	2. Chapter 2

before today, steve had not thought there was anything worse than losing his best friend to the two-inch gap between their fingers. he was, in fact, wrong.

steve lifts the steel beam just long enough for bucky to roll out from under it. it must have weighed two hundred pounds, and every second is agony with the bullet in his stomach.

“you know me,” he insists, desperately searching for a glimmer of recognition in his best friend’s eyes.

“no i don’t!” bucky yells, angry, as if he’s more trying to convince himself than steve or anyone else.

“bucky,” he says as the helicarrier spins towards the river, “you’ve known me your whole life.”

_what the hell did they do to you?_ steve thinks as bucky uppercuts him across the floor. he definitely isn’t pulling his punches.

steve keeps pushing, wiping blood off the corner of his mouth. “your name is james buchanan barnes.”

“shut up!” bucky yells, even angrier, like it’s something he’s been trying his whole life to forget.

“i’m not gonna fight you,” steve says, his voice tired. he drops his shield through a hole in the helicarrier floor and looks his best friend in the eyes. “you’re my friend.”

“you’re my mission,” bucky growls as he throws him to the ground and punches him, once, twice, ten, fifteen times until steve’s face is bloody and broken.

_i’m sorry, buck. if i had trained harder, if i had reached farther, if i had been better. if, if, if. if i could have saved you we wouldn’t be here and it’s all on me. it’s all on me and i’m so sorry. this is all my fault. i’m not gonna fight you because i don’t want to hurt you because this is all my fault._

he doesn’t say anything else, his blue eyes wide and angry. _he doesn’t remember you._

“then finish it,” he whispers, spitting blood onto the floor. bucky pauses with his fist raised, long enough for steve to smile at him. _if it’s the last goddamn thing i do._ “cause i’m with you til the end of the line.”

bucky doesn’t move, he’s shocked, and confused, his whole world is crashing down around him because everything he thought was true for the last seventy years is being undone by one steve rogers. but he doesn’t have a chance to respond because another beam from the roof collapses onto the glass floor and steve falls a hundred feet into the river with the smoldering debris.

_do i deserve this?_ as he falls steve can see bucky on the helicarrier, fist still raised and expression still bewildered and he just watches. _am i paying with my life for what was stolen from you?_ steve hits the water barely conscious, with nothing left to swim up to the surface but just enough to feel the water filling up his lungs as he sinks to the bottom of the river. he closes his eyes. _i’d die for you in a heartbeat if it meant you’d forgive everything i took._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments are nice thank u!


	3. Chapter 3

”steve?”

steve turns, a second too late, bucky disintegrates right in front of him. the gun drops from his hand onto the forest floor as his fingers turn to dust and blow away in the cool breeze. steve’s chest gets tight as he looks at his own hands, the same hands that punched hitler two hundred times and the same hands that drove that plane into the ocean and the same hands that weren’t strong enough to grab bucky before he fell off that train. this could have been so much different.

he drops to his knees, breathing heavy even though he’s hardly moves. “oh, god,” he whispers. 

he’s fifteen again, walking home from his dad’s funeral. bucky offered him a ride home but he insisted on walking all the way, alone, eight blocks. he twenty and he’s lied on his enlistment form for the fourth time because bucky got drafted but that’s steve’s dream, not his. steve always wanted to fight, he was always getting beat up after school and after work and on the way back from the bus stop. he threw his first punch in fifth grade. bucky never wanted to go to war, hell, he dragged steve and those girls, those girls who just wanted to dance, and steve who just wanted to go away to war, he dragged them all to the stark expo to see a flying car. if things were different, he and tony would have been best friends. bucky probably wanted to be a scientist, an engineer, but the war took that dream first, then hydra took it again. 

steve is sitting in a blown-out bar with peggy carter, chasing his eleventh vodka shot with another vodka shot before crushing the cheap glass in his hand. she leaves, shooting him a sympathetic glance, and he’s glad the place is abandoned because she doesn’t have to see the tears on his cheeks (even though she can hear them in his throat.) steve’s waking up in a hospital bed next to sam wilson, an army vet, a good friend and a hero. the last thing he remembers is landing in the river and letting himself sink all the way to the bottom before someone pulled him out and left him in the sand. he remembers watching bucky watching him fall, still wild-eyed and confused, fist still raised above his head as if to take that last punch. but he hesitated, and now they’re here. 

he’s carrying bucky through the snow towards the ship t’challa sent for them, the exposed wires in his left shoulder dripping blood into the otherwise spotless ground. he left his shield on the floor of that bunker next to tony, he left tony there too. he’s watching the wakandan doctors put bucky back in the cryo chamber, and it hurts to see him so sad, hurts to see the way he looks curiously at the doctor’s hands as they repair the damage to his arm as it occurs to steve that this is the first time someone touched him gently since steve patted him on the back way back when they got on that train. 

he doesn’t see sam, or t’challa, or anyone. tony isn’t here. he only sees bucky, his best friend since he was five. only he doesn’t see him anymore, he sees a pile of dust in the leaves. he picks it up with his trembling fingers and tries not to think about the way bucky said his name right before he turned to dust and floated away. lonely, and afraid.

he looks around for his friends. rhodey is calling sam’s name but there’s nothing but that wind. vision’s greyed corpse lies on the ground, a pile of dust next to his face where wanda’s hands had rested. a shocked general okoye sits against a tree as her king disappears beside her. “get up, this is no place to die,” he urges, before disintegrating like the rest. the raccoon man kneels next to his friend groot, pleading a non-existent force to spare him, but his ash floats away. nat, bruce, and thor rejoin him in the clearing. “we lost,” steve says, but he can’t bare to look up from the dust in his palm where lies the most important thing in his life. he can’t think straight, he’s worried about tony, who got on the big ship the first chance he got. _god, what an idiot._

he probably brought that stupid twelve year old with him, that kid from queens who worships the ground he walks on. he’s worried about clint, and scott, and their families, because this wind doesn’t seem to be choosing its victims and anyone could be wiped away. this is the first time the avengers have lost a battle. that scares him, but steve clutches the dust in his fist and makes a promise. _thanos is going to pay for this, if it’s the last thing i do._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uhhhh if u liked this please please please let me know in the comments or follow me on tumblr @nystxgmic thank u love y'all


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